The PPC Systems

There are many PPC systems, but only three big ones, and a few “second-tier” systems:
■ Google AdWords Perhaps the best-known PPC system is Google AdWords (http://
adwords.google.com/). Since Google is the single most important search engine, this
system displays many millions of PPC ads every day.
■ Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions (formerly Overture) This system is also huge,
and displays many millions of ads each day (www.overture.com/). Overture was the
original PPC search-engine company.
■ MSN adCenter MSN, Microsoft’s online service, actually gets its PPC ads from
Yahoo! at present. However, it’s in the process of building its own PPC system and by
the summer of 2006 will probably have stopped using Yahoo! ads entirely.
The “second-tier” systems include services such as FindWhat (www.findwhat.com/),
LookSmart (www.looksmark.com/), Enhance (www.enhance.com/), ePilot (www.epilot.com/),
Espotting (www.espotting.com/), and Kanoodle (www.kanoodle.com/).
Others also exist. In fact, there are literally hundreds of PPC systems . . . most of which are
not worth dealing with. For example, when you figure the time it takes to configure the systems,
it’s not worth the small amount of admittedly cheap clicks you’ll get—and some that border on
the fraudulent (you’ll get little or no traffic from them, but will pay a setup fee that you’ll never
see again). In general, you’ll want to avoid very small PPC systems, and stick to the first- and
second-tier systems.